Yair Rodriguez anticlimactically defeats Brian Ortega via injury at UFC on ABC 3

The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to us today, July 16, 2022, for UFC on ABC 3, going down live from the UBS Arena in Elmont, New York.

Headlining the event is a clash of top featherweight contenders, as former title challenger Brian Ortega (15-2) faces Yair Rodriguez (13-3) in the main event of the evening. Co-headlining the event is a women’s strawweight bout between Michelle Waterson (18-9) and Amanda Lemos (11-2-1).

Reverting back to our main event: Ortega is coming off a defeat to UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski, a fight he was absolutely beat down in, though he nearly won finished him at two different points. Rodriguez on the other hand is coming off a defeat to former champion Max Holloway.

Click here for UFC on ABC 3 results

Continue reading to see how this featherweight main event went down:

Official Result: Yair Rodriguez def. Brian Ortega via TKO (shoulder injury) at 4:11 of round one

Ortega gets right in Rodriguez’ grill once the fight begins, and Rodriguez begins to pick Ortega apart.

Ortega is landing some of his own shots, but Rodriguez is by far the cleaner, more technical striker. Ortega secures a body lock and holds Rodriguez up against the fence for a couple minutes, but is unable to secure the takedown and they’re back to striking range.

Rodriguez gets busy with his hands and lands some really crisp shots to the chin of Ortega. He also starts to get his kicks going, some of which are also landing.

Ortega’s as durable as the come though, as we all know. He’s able to get Rodriguez down into side control. Rodriguez throws his legs up and creates a scramble, and it looks like Ortega falls for an inverted heel hook.

However, he fell back because his shoulder popped out, and the fight ended right there as a result.

For this anticipated of a fight to end this way, it’s a true shame.

But, maybe the UFC will give Josh Emmett his title shot now.

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Brady Ordway

I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed upon Versus, where WEC was televised. Urijah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. That's the first fight I ever saw, and I was immediately hooked. So eventually, I began covering the sport in the fourth quarter of 2018, and have since started writing about animals as well. If you'd like to see those pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!

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